Sharm Tank Vol. 19

Author

Nik Sharma
March 29, 2024

Happy Friday!

I’m sure you’ve all noticed at this point, but I love to kick off each newsletter by talking about something that’s been on my mind the past week.

For the last few weeks, I’ve shared little pop culture tidbits, but this week I’d rather share a little story.

It’s called, “how my public high school made $45k a year by forcing us to buy specific locks for the locker room.”

I sat down last night and did the math to figure out how much money my school made on locks.

Assuming every kid bought around 3 locks over their 4 years, and each lock was $20, my school made $45k off of all 4 classes each year (we had 1,300 kids per class).

That said, I lost way more than 3 locks, but this isn’t about me.

Safe to say we all got ripped off, but eh, at least it’s kind of a funny story.

We’re Hiring!

Director of Paid Media — you will oversee our team of media buyers, providing strategic input around campaigns, how to achieve client results more efficiently, and working with our internal creative and web UX/UI team. You must have good experience to apply for this role.

Office Assistant - We are looking for a part-time office assistant to help us with administrative tasks for ~5 hours each week, coming in on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. We’ll need your help with organizing the office and assisting our team.

Anyways, let’s jump into the real reason you’re here…

The Main Course

We live in an age of performance marketing, where every endeavor needs to be tracked and measured to ensure its efficacy.

It feels like there is a growing tension between performance marketers and those on the brand side who still adhere to more of a “spray and pray” mentality.

And then there’s Jolie.

Jolie is a beauty wellness company founded by Ryan Babenzien and Arjan Singh. Launched in 2021, the brand is celebrated for its game-changing filtered shower head which removes contaminants and chlorine from your water (just this week, it was featured in a WSJ article about status showerheads).

In just 18 months, Babenzien and Singh bootstrapped Jolie from $0-$50M with only three team members.

How? By redefining non-traditional advertising with a unique twist that not only captures attention offline but also fuels online buzz.

This strategy saw a creative blend of real-world events and thought-provoking advertisements that seamlessly connect with their online marketing efforts.

Take, for instance, their wine and oyster dinner in NYC. Jolie’s choice of oysters, nature’s water filters, was no coincidence. It perfectly aligned with Jolie’s mission.

Attendees witnessed firsthand the power of filtration: two tanks of dirty East River water, one with oysters actively filtering contaminants, visually driving home the importance of water purity.

Another strategy that Jolie exploits is ‘surround sound’ marketing, or a multi-channel approach that underscores offline marketing efforts.

Instead of static highway signs, large box trucks are wrapped with eye-catching, thought-provoking messages about water quality, cruising through city streets.

Lo-fi sidewalk stickers and posters are also placed throughout cities in strategic areas with similar messages like “Did you know that your shower water is dirtier than that martini?” or, “Did you know that your shower water is dirtier than that bench or subway handle that you are about to touch?”

Beyond trucks, Jolie utilizes urban landscapes with sidewalk stickers and posters placed strategically across cities and neighborhoods where their customers reside (a great example is their series of wheat-paste posters strategically positioned along the Upper East Side of Manhattan).

These low-fidelity, high-impact messages, such as “Did you know that your shower water is dirtier than that martini?” engage pedestrians in unexpected places and are a great way of targeting specific neighborhoods/demographics.

Just recently, for Valentine’s Day, Jolie unveiled its Love Shack, a bright red booth in the heart of Soho, New York that featured complimentary gifts, including a warm elixir from Chef Flynn McGarry of Gem Wine, a unique donut created in collaboration with Wilder, and a custom dried floral bouquets as a gift with purchase from florist Audrey Hilfiger.

Jolie’s use of varied channels and activations creates the prevailing sense that the brand is everywhere.

The brand has taken great care to market itself as something beyond what you would buy at the hardware store. Some of the brand’s first store accounts were in untraditional spots that catered to people looking for better wellness products. For example, Jolie is available at the trendy grocer, Erewhon.

This strategy demonstrates the effectiveness of using varied channels and campaigns to bolster your brand narrative. Ultimately, you want your product to feel familiar to the consumer and their environment/lifestyle.

“Marketing today is a lost art and the belief that "measurement" makes marketing better today is simply not true. If measurement of marketing made marketing better than we would not have so many unprofitable companies. It's as simple as that,” says Babenzien.

Jolie’s non-traditional OOH strategy is an inspiration for companies seeking to stand out in the crowded DTC space.

It goes beyond mere advertising; it's about creating a narrative, engaging with audiences on multiple levels, and seamlessly integrating offline experiences with online momentum to create a pervasive brand narrative.

What We Read This Week

Campaign of the Week

If you’ve been anywhere near the DTC space this week, then I’m sure you’ve seen or heard of this collaboration. This week, we’re highlighting Liquid Death x e.l.f.’s Corpse Paint, a surprising and seemingly random collaboration that’s shaking the Internet (not breaking, just shaking). 

Corpse Paint is a coffin-shaped make-up set that lets you look like Gene Simmons' estranged daughter. It, “allows you and your BFFs to cause a little mayhem and feel like an emperor at your favorite behemoth of a shopping mall.”

This is one of the best collaborations I’ve seen in a long while for numerous reasons. First, there is overlap between Liquid Death and e.l.f.’s Gen Z audience so customers likely have familiarity with both brands.

The two brands could not be more different, servicing different industries with distinct brand identities. But that’s also why this works so well.

Combining the two brands is absurd, and that absurdity is the secret to virality. Just check out the ad spot Liquid Death used to promote Corpse Paint. The ad is irreverent and plays on those old school make-up commercials for girls.

This subversive spin on familiarity is often one the best ways to create shock value without compromising your brand guidelines.

Vendor of the Week

Yotpo gives you all of the building blocks you need to turn first-time buyers into repeat customers for life. Through its robust retention marketing platform, you can leverage reviews, email, SMS, subscriptions, and loyalty programs such as referrals. 

This allows you to create a seamless post-purchase journey tailored to each customer. For example, you can segment users automatically based on the sentiment of their review and determine the optimal way to follow up with them.

But that’s not all…

Just this week, Yotpo unveiled “Is Typing,” a weekly newsletter that shares insights from some of the greatest CRM managers and email marketers in the game. If you’re a fan of this newsletter, I’d highly recommend checking it out for some inspiration.

Want To Work With Us?

Click below to learn more about our services and how we can send your brand into hyperdrive!